Beverly Cleary, the celebrated children’s author whose memories of her Oregon childhood were shared with millions through the likes of Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died. She was 104.Cleary’s publisher HarperCollins announced Friday that the author died Thursday in Northern California, where she had lived since the 1960s. No cause of death was given.FILE – In this photo taken Nov. 12, 2003, President George Bush, center, stands in the Oval Office with recipients of the National Medal of Arts. From left: musician Buddy Guy, dancer Suzanne Farrell, author Beverly Cleary and actor Ron Howard.Trained as a librarian, Cleary didn’t start writing books until her early 30s when she wrote Henry Huggins, published in 1950. Children worldwide came to love the adventures of Huggins and neighbors Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, Beatrice “Beezus” Quimby and her younger sister, Ramona. They inhabit a down-home, wholesome setting on Klickitat Street — a real street in Portland, Oregon, the city where Cleary spent much of her youth.Among the Henry titles were Henry and Ribsy, Henry and the Paper Route and Henry and Beezus.Ramona, perhaps her best-known character, made her debut in Henry Huggins with only a brief mention.”All the children appeared to be only children so I tossed in a little sister and she didn’t go away. She kept appearing in every book,” she said in a March 2016 telephone interview from her California home.Cleary herself was an only child and said the character wasn’t a mirror.”I was a well-behaved little girl, not that I wanted to be,” she said. “At the age of Ramona, in those days, children played outside. We played hopscotch and jump rope and I loved them and always had scraped knees.”In all, there were eight books on Ramona between Beezus and Ramona in 1955 and Ramona’s World in 1999. Others included Ramona the Pest and Ramona and Her Father. In 1981, Ramona and Her Mother won the National Book Award.Cleary wasn’t writing recently because she said she felt “it’s important for writers to know when to quit.””I even got rid of my typewriter. It was a nice one but I hate to type. When I started writing I found that I was thinking more about my typing than what I was going to say, so I wrote it long hand,” she said in March 2016.Although she put away her pen, Cleary re-released three of her most cherished books with three famous fans writing forewords for the new editions.Actress Amy Poehler penned the front section of Ramona Quimby, Age 8; author Kate DiCamillo wrote the opening for The Mouse and the Motorcycle; and author Judy Blume wrote the foreword for Henry Huggins.Cleary, a self-described “fuddy-duddy,” said there was a simple reason she began writing children’s books.”As a librarian, children were always asking for books about `kids like us.’ Well, there weren’t any books about kids like them. So when I sat down to write, I found myself writing about the sort of children I had grown up with,” Cleary said in a 1993 Associated Press interview.Dear Mr. Henshaw, the touching story of a lonely boy who corresponds with a children’s book author, won the 1984 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. It “came about because two different boys from different parts of the country asked me to write a book about a boy whose parents were divorced,” she told National Public Radio as she neared her 90th birthday.Ramona and Her Father in 1978 and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 in 1982 were named Newbery Honor Books.Cleary ventured into fantasy with The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and the sequels Runaway Ralph and Ralph S. Mouse. Socks, about a cat’s struggle for acceptance when his owners have a baby, is told from the point of view of the pet himself.She was named a Living Legend in 2000 by the Library of Congress. In 2003, she was chosen as one of the winners of the National Medal of Arts and met President George W. Bush. She is lauded in literary circles far and wide.She produced two volumes of autobiography for young readers, A Girl from Yamhill, on her childhood, and My Own Two Feet, which tells the story of her college and young adult years up to the time of her first book.”I seem to have grown up with an unusual memory. People are astonished at the things I remember. I think it comes from living in isolation on a farm the first six years of my life where my main activity was observing,” Cleary said.Cleary was born Beverly Bunn on April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, Oregon, and lived on a farm in Yamhill until her family moved to Portland when she was school-age. She was a slow reader, which she blamed on illness and a mean-spirited first-grade teacher who disciplined her by snapping a steel-tipped pointer across the back of her hands.By sixth or seventh grade, “I decided that I was going to write children’s stories,” she said.Cleary graduated from junior college in Ontario, California, and the University of California at Berkeley, where she met her husband, Clarence. They married in 1940; Clarence Cleary died in 2004. They were the parents of twins, a boy and a girl born in 1955 who inspired her book Mitch and Amy.Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and inspired Japanese, Danish and Swedish television programs based on the Henry Huggins series. A 10-part PBS series, Ramona, starred Canadian actress Sarah Polley. The 2010 film Ramona and Beezus featured actresses Joey King and Selena Gomez.Cleary was asked once what her favorite character was.”Does your mother have a favorite child?” she responded.
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Day: March 26, 2021
Chinese officials briefed diplomats Friday on the ongoing research into the origin of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, ahead of the expected release of a long-awaited report from the World Health Organization.The briefing appeared to be an attempt by China to get out its view on the report, which has become enmeshed in a diplomatic spat. The U.S. and others have raised questions about Chinese influence and the independence of the findings, and China has accused critics of politicizing a scientific study.”Our purpose is to show our openness and transparency,” said Yang Tao, a Foreign Ministry official. “China fought the epidemic in a transparent manner and has nothing to hide.”WHO worked with Chinese in WuhanThe report, which has been delayed repeatedly, is based on a visit earlier this year by a WHO team of international experts to Wuhan, the city in central China where infections from a new coronavirus were first reported in late 2019.The experts worked with Chinese counterparts, and both sides have to agree on the final report. It’s unclear when it will come out.Feng Zijian, a Chinese team member and the deputy director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the experts examined four possible ways the virus got to Wuhan.They are: a bat carrying the virus infected a human, a bat infected an intermediate mammal that spread it to a human, shipments of cold or frozen food; and a laboratory that researches viruses in Wuhan.Over 50 countries representedThe experts voted on the hypotheses after in-depth discussion and concluded one of the two animal routes or the cold chain was most likely how it was transmitted. A lab leak was viewed as extremely unlikely, Feng said.His remarks were reported by state broadcaster CCTV, which said envoys from 50 countries, the League of Arab States and the African Union attended the briefing at the Foreign Ministry.”China firmly opposes certain countries’ attempts to politicize the origin tracing issue and make groundless accusations and hold China accountable,” the ministry said in an online post about the briefing.Separately, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, “I would like to stress that virus tracing is a scientific issue that should be studied by scientists through cooperation.”She told reporters that the experts are still discussing the contents and translation of the report, and she did not know when it would be released.WHO report in final stagesAt a press briefing later Friday in Geneva, the World Health Organization expert who led WHO’s China mission said the nearly 400-page report was finalized and in the process of being fact-checked and translated.”I expect that in the next few days, that whole process will be completed and we will be able to release it publicly,” WHO expert Peter Ben Embarek said.At a Biden administration health briefing Friday, U.S. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the agency was looking forward to the release of the WHO report.Dr. Anthony Fauci said the explanation that “most public health officials agree with” about how COVID-19 appeared in humans is that the virus was likely spreading in China below the radar for several weeks, allowing it to be well-adapted by the time it was recognized.The government’s top infectious disease expert’s comments came in response to speculation by former CDC head Robert Redfield on CNN that COVID-19 came from a lab.”What he likely was expressing is that there certainly are possibilities … of how a virus adapts itself to an efficient spread among humans,” Fauci said.
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Novelist Larry McMurtry, who wrote of complex relationships in novels such as The Last Picture Show and Terms of Endearment, and then helped redefine the American Old West with the epic Lonesome Dove, has died at 84, The New York Times reported Friday.McMurtry’s death was confirmed by family spokesperson Amanda Lundberg, who did not specify a cause or say where he died, the Times said.In addition to his Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove in 1986, McMurtry won an Academy Award in 2006 with writing partner Diana Ossana for the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain about the relationship between two gay cowboys. He also was nominated in 1972 for his adaptation of his novel The Last Picture Show.McMurtry wrote nearly 50 books — collections of essays and criticism and memoirs in addition to his novels — but Lonesome Dove had the most impact. It was a sweeping tale of two aging former Texas Rangers, the amiable Gus and cantankerous Call, on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.”If anybody had any sense, they’d throw out Moby-Dick and put Lonesome Dove in the center as the great American epic novel,” Carolyn See, a literature professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times in 2003. “No question about it. His heroes in that book are just terrific. His women are just terrific. And he sustains it for 800 pages.”FILE – Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry accept the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for their work on “Brokeback Mountain” at the 78th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, March 5, 2006.McMurtry developed lasting affection for many of his characters and quite often brought them back for sequels. The principals from Lonesome Dove would eventually be in four books and the characters from The Last Picture Show generated five novels.Critics praised McMurtry for his skill in fashioning nuanced and compelling characters and the way he brought them together — whether they were coming-of-age teenagers fighting small-town ennui in The Last Picture Show or a self-absorbed woman and her needy, dying daughter in Terms of Endearment.McMurtry had a contrarian streak — he wore jeans with his tuxedo jacket to pick up his Oscar — and took a simple approach to his writing.”I like making stuff up,” he told Texas Monthly in 2016. “I just write.”
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The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday there are more 125.5 million global COVID-19 infections.The U.S. has more cases than any other country, with over 30 million infections, followed by Brazil, with 12.3 million, and India, with 11.8 million.India said Friday it set a record with a tally of more than 59,000 new cases in the previous 24-hour period.On Thursday, Brazil said it had recorded its highest number of new coronavirus cases in 24 hours with 100,158 infections.UNESCO said a new study has found that the coronavirus pandemic has adversely affected the reading proficiency of more than 100 million children.“The number of children lacking basic reading skills was on a downward curve prior to the pandemic, and expected to fall from 483 million to 460 million in 2020,” UNESCO said in a statement Thursday. “Instead, as a result of the pandemic, the number of children in difficulty jumped to 584 million in 2020, increasing by more than 20% and wiping out gains made over the past two decades through education efforts.”UNESCO is convening a meeting Monday with education ministers from around the world to discuss ways to combat the troubling trend.Canada hit a small stumbling block in its vaccination program when U.S. vaccine manufacturer Moderna said it was delaying a shipment of nearly 600,000 shots expected to be delivered this weekend.Anita Anand, Canada’s federal procurement minister, said Moderna officials attributed the setback to a “backlog in its quality assurance process.” The vaccines, however, are expected to be shipped out before the end of next week.New York City’s theater industry workers are about to receive a literal shot in the arm. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that a vaccination site will be set up on Broadway for theater workers, with satellite sites around the city. New York officials say they want Broadway to reopen in the fall. “It’s time to raise the curtain and bring Broadway back,” de Blasio said.
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Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Friday the former U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director’s belief that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a lab is his opinion, and not one shared by a majority of public health care experts.Fauci who spoke during a regular White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, was responding to comments by former U.S. president Donald Trump-appointed CDC director Robert Redfield.FILE – Then-Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the Department of Education building in Washington, July 8, 2020.In an interview, as part of a documentary on the U.S. news channel CNN, Redfield said it is his belief that the virus was created in a lab and escaped, not necessarily intentionally. He said it was his opinion, something he was allowed to have now that he is a private citizen.When asked about the comments, Fauci said he was familiar with the comments and he said it was one of several theories as to the origin of the virus. He said he believes it is based on the idea that when the virus was first identified in late December of 2019, it seemed well adapted to transmission among the human population, suggesting it was adapted in the lab.But Fauci said the explanation that most health professionals go by is that the virus had been circulating in China for several weeks, if not a month, before it was clinically recognized, giving it plenty of time to adapt to the human population.When asked her thoughts on Redfield’s theory, current CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she had no formal opinion on the origin of the virus. She referred to a study on the origin of the virus being conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and said she is looking forward to their thoughts on the issue.In preliminary comments regarding the virus originating in a lab, leaders of the WHO study said they believed it was highly unlikely.
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The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported early Friday there are more 125.5 million global COVID-19 infections.The U.S. has more cases than another country, with over 30 million infections, followed by Brazil, with 12.3 million, and India, with 11.8 million.India said Friday it set a record with a tally of more than 59,000 new cases in the previous 24-hour period.On Thursday, Brazil said it had recorded its highest number of new coronavirus cases in 24 hours with 100,158 infections.UNESCO said a new study has found that the coronavirus pandemic has adversely affected the reading proficiency of more than 100 million children.“The number of children lacking basic reading skills was on a downward curve prior to the pandemic, and expected to fall from 483 million to 460 million in 2020,” UNESCO said in a statement Thursday. “Instead, as a result of the pandemic, the number of children in difficulty jumped to 584 million in 2020, increasing by more than 20% and wiping out gains made over the past two decades through education efforts.”UNESCO is convening a meeting Monday with education ministers from around the world to discuss ways to combat the troubling trend.Canada hit a small stumbling block in its vaccination program when U.S. vaccine manufacturer Moderna said it was delaying a shipment of nearly 600,000 shots expected to be delivered this weekend.Anita Anand, Canada’s federal procurement minister, said Moderna officials attributed the setback to a “backlog in its quality assurance process.” The vaccines, however, are expected to be shipped out before the end of next week.New York City’s theater industry workers are about to receive a literal shot in the arm. Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that a vaccination site will be set up on Broadway for theater workers, with satellite sites around the city. New York officials say they want Broadway to reopen in the fall. “It’s time to raise the curtain and bring Broadway back,” de Blasio said.
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The first batch of COVID-19 vaccines arrived in South Sudan’s Juba International Airport on Thursday. The 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be offered first to health care workers, including doctors and nurses, along with other vulnerable groups.South Sudan Health Minister Elizabeth Achuil said 732,000 additional doses are scheduled to arrive over the next few months through the support of the COVAX facility, a global partnership made up of a coalition that includes the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF and the World Health Organization. COVAX was established to ensure that all countries can equitably access COVID-19 vaccines.Achuil said the AstraZeneca shipment is a milestone for South Sudan.“The COVID-19 vaccine will help us to protect our population against the COVID infections and prepare for a return to a normal life. We are grateful to all partners for their support in facilitating the arrival of the vaccines in our country,” she told reporters at Juba International Airport.A COVID-19 vaccination campaign will kick off across the country next week, according to Hamida Lasseko, the UNICEF representative for South Sudan.“It is very important that the government has decided to start with the health workers, who are the front-line workers, because they are the ones to be safe so as to continue with delivering health services,” Lasseko said.German Ambassador to South Sudan Manuel Muller, who represented the donor community at Juba International Airport to receive the vaccine doses, said South Sudan is one of 140 countries that will benefit from the COVAX initiative by the end of May.“Our goal is that everyone in the world can have access to the required vaccine. That is what we mean when we say the vaccine against COVID-19 must be a common goal. People in the developing countries also have the right to a vaccine that has been tested safely, thoroughly and transparently,” Muller said.COVAX has secured more than 3 billion doses of vaccines that can cover at least one-third of the global population in 2021, according to Muller.FILE – A pharmacist prepares to fill a syringe with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Vaccine Village in Antwerp, Belgium, March 16, 2021.The AstraZeneca vaccine requires two doses to ensure optimal immune response against the virus. The doses will be provided on a voluntary basis and free of charge in South Sudan.Confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine had plunged across Europe after recent reports that a small number of recipients had developed unusual blood clots amid a coronavirus wave on the continent.In France, Germany, Italy and Spain, polling shows more people now believe the vaccine is unsafe, compared with those who think it is safe. That is a major setback to a shot that remains Europe’s best hope for saving lives.Millions of doses have been sitting unused in refrigerators across the continent, with doctors reporting some people canceling appointments for injections over fears about side effects.In South Sudan, health experts say people should still wear face masks and practice other preventative measures, said Dr. Fabian Ndenzako, World Health Organization representative for South Sudan.“I would like to emphasize that if the vaccine starts to roll out around the world, they should complement, not replace, the proven public measures such as wearing masks, physical distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene, alongside robust programs to test, trace, isolate and treat,” Ndenzako told South Sudan in Focus.More than 15 African countries received COVID-19 vaccines in recent weeks.
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